Biography

2009 was a watershed year for Lily Frost.

Off the top, she received a Gemini nomination for the score, which she co-wrote, of the hit TV show "Being Erica." Lily also co-wrote the theme song "Everything I Ever Wanted to Be."

(She will be appearing, as herself, in a second-season episode, and you know you've turned a certain corner, fame-wise, when you appear "as yourself" in anything.)

To support the release of "Lily Swings," she toured all over Canada with her western swing band (called "The Debonairs" in honour of the late great Canadian underground legend Ray Condo), performing songs from the repertoire of Billie Holiday, to packed houses and standing ovations everywhere.

2009 also saw Lily expand her fan-base in France, embarking with a four-piece band on two sold-out tours in a year, drawing praise from French critics for her "mastery of ambiance," her "wide palette of emotion," and the powerful singing voice and strong personality of a woman who clearly "knows where she's going."

Her last album, Cinemagique, also won rave reviews in France. Liberation praised the "alchemy, kaleidoscopic vision…and superb voice of Lily Frost." Comme Ca concurred, saying "this excellent album…shines with sensuality and charm."

In the course of this eventful year, Lily and Jose (her collaborator and husband) poured their heart and souls into the making of her new disc, Viridian Torch—Lily's sixth solo disc.

Viridian Torch is a departure for Lily. Since her early days in The Colorifics, we were used to thinking of Lily as a creature of the urban landscape, of the night, a torch singer and chanteuse in the Julie London tradition, whose sultry singing is best imagined soaring above the smoke of some dimly lit nightclub or speakeasy.

But for inspiration, this time, Lily has tapped into the wilderness of Canada, of ancient trees, terrifying electric storms, irritating insects, and romance with the land, as expressed in French poetry—specifically, a corner of Lake Huron her family has called its own for three generations.

"In a way it's a love letter to my mother, who shared nature's intricacies and joys with me throughout my life. It's the place where I've always felt the most grounded. Viridian Torch is the best way I can express the deep sense of strength and profound gratitude it gives me."

Lily and her family moved from downtown Toronto last year, to a forest outside the city.
But the songs were all written and recorded before that. It was a case of life imitating art: "The songs magically drew us back to nature," she says.

Meanwhile, Lily, who looks like a cross between Bettie Page and Ava Gardner, and is almost impossible to imagine in a place that doesn't prominently feature skyscrapers—and who always seems quite at home in a cocktail dress, sipping her signature drink, the espresso martini—says she can walk "blindfold and barefooted" over the rocks of her home turf; learned to "read the sky" and when it's going to rain (a skill she says served her well in the city, when one city afternoon she amazed an incredulous cab driver by jumping in his cab and telling him "it's going to rain in about 2 minutes," sure enough within a block it started to pour).

The bed tracks and strings on Viridian Torch were recorded in another sacred place (other than the forest) St. George the Martyr church in downtown Toronto; on ALL wooden instruments, and completed on the Niagara Escarpment (protected Canadian shield).

The disc also draws inspiration from another quintessentially Canadian source: the Group of Seven painters, and their friend the writer, painter, and prototypical feminist Emily Carr (an honourary member of the Group of Seven). Their work, with its deep connection to the Canadian landscape, helped propel her to write about her own emotional connections with the earth, trees and stars, fires and storms, sun and moon.

And there's even a song about mosquitoes.

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The first song, "The City Seems So Far," is about the time it takes to adjust from the hectic, hurly-burly pace of the city to the calmer rhythms of nature. After being in the city a while, Lily says it usually takes her one sleep to adjust her eyes and really be properly able to see and feel the surroundings, when she's in nature. As the song puts it: "It takes me a night/To look in your eyes…and fall in love again."

It’s also a spiritual love song to nature and to the forest and the "waters deep" of Georgian Bay. The second song, "Emily Carr" (written by Jose) is about the sexual component of her love of nature.

"Emily Carr (written by Jose) used to make love with nature," she says. The song is also a soliloquy to solitude, and the "different kind of loneliness" she may have felt out in her cabin in the woods.

The song "Wychwood" is about the connection of the trees to one another—trees often much older than any of the human beings among them. The idea is that the ancient trees are listening and holding secrets throughout the ages from people who have passed before them.

The songs "Forest Fire" and "La Tempete" ("The Storm") are an evocation of the harsher and more forbidding aspects of nature, her great power to "annihilate and murder in a single exhale."

And speaking of the harshness of nature, the lighthearted "Bug Tax" (with sound effects of Jose and Lily in the background, swatting themselves and saying "Ow!") “It's the price you've gotta pay/For coming round this way."

The two French songs "Chalet du Bois" "Verlaine" are deeply felt and deeply poetic. "Chalet" speaks of an unchanging cabin in the woods, a chalet "between Champlain and the Indians, between my youth and timelessness, between my village and Eiffel Tower," as Lily says.

For "Verlaine," Lily chose a poem by Paul Verlaine about the relation of a willow to a pond, and wrote a melody to it. It's an epic song featuring harpsichord with Gainsbourgesque string pulses and ending with a choir—which is how the live show ends, with the audience singing Lily offstage.

Whether brooding and stormy, lovely and melancholy, lilting and poetic, Viridian Torch celebrates the wonders of nature in all her many moods, by a supremely talented artist at the top of her game. Whether you live in the country or the city, it'll sweep you away from your quotidian cares and worries, spirit you away from the ashen faces and honking horns to an enchanted, viridian world all its own.